When War Reveals What Endures

The war in Iraq was ugly, but the country was not. I’ve never seen a more perfect sunset than when I was in the turret of a gun truck. The horizon lamented the turmoil in the land with scarlet and crimson to a degree I may never see again. It was as if she were mourning the loss of our humanity, all while reminding us of our insignificance in history. The same dirt Jonah and Abraham walked on swirled in my Wiley X ballistic goggles.

In each convoy, I stayed hypervigilant and surveyed all that surrounded me. It was hard not to be enraptured by the beauty of antiquity. The date palms showcased their verdant greens, and the mosques proved that even humans could create beauty. Our buildings were beautiful, but our actions were not.

I saw blue-cheeked bee-eaters perched on concertina wire bordering fields of sunflowers in full bloom outside Balad. Who knew such tropical-looking birds existed in a place I was told was a barren wasteland? Roadside blossoms showcasing eternal glory next to the ruins of a bombed village felt slightly poetic. Amid the scrublands were highlighter-yellow Uromastyx lizards living in burrows, all while dining on the yellow flowers that bloomed in the spring.

The beauty was there and had been for time immemorial. My task was to be a soldier, not a naturalist. Yet I was only a soldier for a short time, and a naturalist I’ll always be. Old habits die hard. I spent the time I should have been sleeping gazing at more stars than I could count. I was awestruck by the same bedazzled sky that may have created the religion I now subscribe to. The reverence I felt on some of those nights was overwhelming. I would lie prone with flashlight in hand, watching harvester ants billow out of their sandy mounds late into the night. When the days are too hot, nature goes nocturnal, which has always amazed me.

Splendor subsists even in places where horrors exist. It’s all a matter of perspective and the beauty of surviving into an introspective middle age. Things can always be worse, and sometimes we let the ugliness win, but beauty is always there if you only take a moment to notice. Sometimes, that small shift in focus is all it takes to change your outcome.

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Stan Lake is a writer, photographer, and filmmaker currently living in Bethania, North Carolina with his wife Jess and their house full of animals. He split his time growing up between chasing wildlife and screaming on stages in hardcore bands you’ve never heard of. He has been published by Dead Reckoning Collective, The Havok Journal, Reptiles Magazine, Lethal Minds Journal, and many others. He filmed and directed a documentary called “Hammer Down” about his 2005 deployment in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom in with Alpha Battery 5-113^th of the NC Army National Guard. You can find his books, collected works, and social media accounts at www.stanlakecreates.com

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.